Jenn Blair

Centennial Exposition (1878)

Come spy the wood and its ravishes of shipworm
even as you gather the courage to inspect various
sea prey in jars before moving to the totem posts
so very often mistaken for Phoenician idols
and the cocoa bean and pod in various preparations. 
Behold Roquefort cheeses, manufactured corks
and stuffed birds from Ontario, tall columns of
cigarettes in showy wrappers, bologna sausages
(some samples six feet long in length),
dozens of specimens of Dutch Cheese,
large castile soap cakes, eels from Bologna
and Palermo, butter-machines and plow shares.
Renew and rededicate your wicked, anxious hearts
for just beyond that curve lies a fantastical group of
hellbenders and snot-otters (pleasingly repulsive enough),
large alien things kept cool hour after hour
inside a tank whose water continually circulates
though an ingenious coil pipe packed in ice.

When has fifty cents ever given so much to man?
Turks oversee statues stuffed in barrels as pavilions
and mighty showcases rise. Here, the great future
amasses even as President Grant holds up a hand,
briefly turning aside to sneeze before wiping away
the mortal droplets and stepping stately though long
lines of strong-backed sailors saluting proudly.

Let our grand General and all our fine people observe:
flagons in the true Russian style, a rare Newport doll made
of wax, expatriate’s startling marble statue of Cleopatra,
wicked asp not yet slithered out of her still warm hand!
a polecats’ snow-white head, sloop-rigged ice boat, Laplander
sledges, blubber knives, dentist plates for jaws, walnut cases
devoted to alligator skins, drills and button hooks, vegetable
dye-stuffs and lastly—the mighty engine composed of
fifteen hundred horse power, fifteen hundred times four
hoofs thundering—swiftly dragging the old world off.

 

 

Moore's Ford Bridge

Men full of secrets
wash faces, cut/
up butter/ spread it
cold /on bread/ tear
across soft grain/
taking uneven bites.
Women know it too.
That hands grabbing
breasts/hips/backs
have held other things.
Afraid to ask, they
put extra coins in
mayonnaise/pickle
jars and Sundays sit
on pine backed pews
shushing children/
applying warm saliva
to flyaway down.

A farmer looks out
over the cotton fields
wondering how many
sacks could it fill now.
The weight on the
tongue of the WORD
not spoken. Every stone
in this county plucked
out/shook hard and
where is it.
What’s not root/ bug/soil/
not scurrying off.

 

 

 

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